Posted
by
CowboyNeal
on Monday January 26, 2004 @03:04PM
from the looking-back dept.

An anonymous reader writes "N-Philes just finished up a 10-part history of Nintendo's Fire Emblem SRPG series, which we Americans just got a taste of for the first time, this past Fall, courtesy of the GBA version. You can check out the history at N-Philes and learn about the game I can't stop playing." I've yet to play this, but Hemos has been playing it almost since it shipped and tempting me with it.

I too have been sucked into the FE reality distortion field. It's a good game for people who like strategy, variably* deep plot and fantasy games.

I am surprised that the other FE games weren't ported over, considering the popularity of strategy and RPG games. Perhaps we'll see a "perfect collection" or something similar in the not-too-distant future.

The game has ups and downs. I find it frustrating that you can't buy items unless you are on a battle map. This means you must create a "pony express" method of sending out party members to the armories, then "trading" backward until the item you want reaches the party member who needs it. There are many other frustrating bits (like the inability to go back to a battle and do it again), but the game is so damned addictive!

* The plot can go into great detail if you choose to use the "support" capability of various characters. Doing so will unlock different endings and increase stats. Of course, you can "opt out" of the deeper plot points by eschewing the "support" capability altogether.

The most disconcerting thing will probably be having the game frequently save (after every turn), such that you can't simply reset it if a major character dies never to return.

I think it's somewhat refreshing. One can focus entirely on the strategy instead of constantly rebooting because they think they lost a character that'll be critical later on. But I can see others being upset about this.

Another thing that'd be nice would be to get rid of the concept of burying obscure items and characters and 'easter egg' style content in RPGs where you've got to play through them a couple of times with the aid of a FAQ/walkthough to collect stuff. Sometimes the concept is rewarding, but when you miss the 16th step of a 24 step process and have it change the ending of the (40 hour) game it does less to increase the replay value than it does the level of irritation.

The save function in the Fire Emblem game released in the US is very frustrating, yes. Would it really have hurt so much to let the player actually SAVE during a level?

The game also will save you turn the system off, so if my siblings have been playing my cartridge, I usually end up resuming their games to see if they were just taking a break (as you're only allowed one game to be played at once, even though you can save on three slots between chapters), or if one of their characters had just been struck d

In response to the people who complain about the fact that the game saves after every turn: If you screw up, restart the level. This feature was implemented so players couldn't simply play one turn flawlessly, save, then use trial and error along with resetting until the next turn was flawless, save, and repeat the process. The feature makes it so that you actually have to *gasp* strategize your way through the strategy RPG! If you don't like having to come up with a strategy, then maybe a game like this isn't for you.
If you're having to use your brain to beat the game, and if you have to restart a couple times, that's GOOD. It shows that the game is challenging. If you think that THIS Fire Emblem is hard, you should try out Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, the most difficult game in the series!
The Fire Emblem series is popular for a reason: It gives the player a challenging game with great all-around value. If you find it annoying that you have to think a bit, then you shouldn't have bought it.
And to whomever may find it annoying that you can only have one chapter in-progress at a time: It's like this in many GBA games with a quick save feature. Once you access this quick save, which can be made at any point, except cutscenes, usually, the data is erased. It's a temporary save file stored inside the cartridge's memory, and hardware limitations prevent there from being multiple quick saves stored at one time.
Visigothe, you get a merchant to store and organize your items very early in the game. I don't know where you are, but in chapter 13x, your problem is solved. Frankly, you shouldn't be doing TOO much item buying up to this point.
And you can redo battles. You just can't choose to play chapter 11 in a save file where you're at chapter 15. It wouldn't make sense to be able to go back and replay missions in the same quest file, due to the nature of the game. Think about it: If you could go back to chapter 11 with level ten promoted characters from level 20, there wouldn't be much strategy involved in chapter 11, now would there? Not to mention the fact that the game's plot wouldn't permit that.
Sheetrock, you don't HAVE to use walkthroughs. The game gives very subtle hints as to how to find these secrets (such as a dialogue mentioning a certain character in your army's name, or a villager mentioning seeing something suspicious near a pile of bones in a desert). If what you're referring to is the support convos, dont' worry: Once you beat the game, once, and/or get five support conversations, you can see a full list of characters, the characters they can have support conversations with, and you can also view any conversations you have already obtained with that character.
Ok, I'm done. Now, back to gaming.

In response to the people who complain about the fact that the game saves after every turn: If you screw up, restart the level. This feature was implemented so players couldn't simply play one turn flawlessly, save, then use trial and error along with resetting until the next turn was flawless, save, and repeat the process. The feature makes it so that you actually have to *gasp* strategize your way through the strategy RPG! If you don't like having to come up with a strategy, then maybe a game like this is

Sure, it would be nice of Nintendo to let players play the trial and error way. But they don't include that because it could, potentially harm the experience of the game. Nintendo made it challenging for a reason, and to give players a way out like that would defeat the purpose of the challenge.

I think its fair statement to say that the GBA will probably be home to the 'next-generation' of turn based strategy games. The successes are hard to deny; Advance Wars, Advance Wars 2, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and now Fire Emblem (Zero for long time fans). All of the previous games having been originally developed on much older and weaker systems (read the link, the first game was the NES/Famicom and any reader here knows the GBA blows the NES/Famicom out of the water in terms of hardware power).

With this in mind, where do you think Nintendo would tell Intelligent Systems to re-release the older games? A 10-in-1 game for the Gamecube or 10 seperate games on the insanely installed Gameboy fanbase which is already going rabid over the fact that it missed so many good games over the past 10 years?

I think its fair statement to say that the GBA will probably be home to the 'next-generation' of turn based strategy games. The successes are hard to deny; Advance Wars, Advance Wars 2, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and now Fire Emblem (Zero for long time fans).

If you haven't checked them out yet, you might want to try Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis and Onimusha Tactics for the GBA. Both are more in the style of FFTA, but offer significant differences to justify owning each of them (assuming you're e

Onimusha Tactics is very linear and is a bit easy at the start (it gets harder, though). It holds a lot in common with FFTA and Tactics Ogre, especially in the layout of the maps, but is fairly different in the story and the various abilities the characters have. Additionally, there's a system for upgrading weapons and armour in Onimusha Tactics that's fairly straight-forward and helps a great deal in advancing particular characters.

I've been wondering ever since I got SSBM what Fire Emblem is all about, this review was very comprehensive (at least to me), it's a great overview of the series. Now I just wish I could find fan-translated ROMs of the games. Or I could actually go out and learn to read Japanese, but naaah.